Organizers of art shows and sales are feeling bullish about Western Art Week in Great Falls this year. The events begin Wednesday and will spread to a variety of locations around the city through the weekend.
The shows and auctions this week are expected to sell as much as a combined $6 million worth of art in Great Falls.
Several officials with some of the bigger Great Falls shows and auctions say there is a general feeling that the economy in Montana — and the country — is improving. There also is a sense among some artists and galleries that they may be over the hump from the 2008-2009 nationwide recession and its aftermath.
"In general sense, I have seen actual results trending upwards," said Sarah Burt, chief curator at the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, which will hold The Russell: The Sale to Benefit the C.M. Russell Museum this week. "It's rebounding from the terrible times of 2008 and 2009. I think it's pretty good right now."
Prices for work by one of the masters of Western art, Charlie Russell, "are pretty strong right now," Burt added.
On Saturday, 21 of Russell's works will be in The Russell Live Auction at the Best Western Heritage Inn — the final museum event of the week.
"It's fantastic," Burt said of the museum's Russell offerings, including three watercolors that may fetch $230,000 or more each.
Russell works also will be offered for sale at other locations around the city, including the March in Montana show.
Bigfork's Steve Cawdrey, who helps run the Western Masters Art Show and Sale at the Heritage Inn, said he believes the economy is looking up.
"We've seen a change the last six months," Cawdrey said. "People are buying art. My sense is the mood in the country is more positive, and our artists have been very upbeat."
Burt noted that there were "really strong" prices at last year's Reno, Nev., and Jackson Hole, Wyo., art auctions, which took place after Western Art Week in Great Falls. The July Coeur d'Alene Art Auction in Reno sold more than 300 works for about $17 million, up from $9.2 million in sales in 2010, and $11.7 million in 2009, but less than the $37 million in sales it had in 2008 — before the recession hit.
Meanwhile, the fifth-annual Jackson Hole Art Auction sold a record $9 million worth of art in September.
Great Falls' results from a year ago did not produce chump change, either.
The C.M. Russell Museum's three events grossed $1,499,690 in 2011, edging out the March in Montana auctions, which sold $1,451,400 at its pair of events.
"It's going to be much better this year," predicted Cheyenne's Bob Nelson, owner of Manitou Galleries, which teams with the Coeur d'Alene Art Auction to run the March in Montana show.
Nelson is less bullish on the national economy, which he calls "problematic." But he said art buyers with oil interests or rising stock market holdings have helped bring the Western art market around closer to where it was before the recession. Some art buffs have decided to part with their money even if the economy in general "isn't that good," Nelson said.
Manitou has galleries in Wyoming and Santa Fe, N.M. He said the art market in New Mexico remains slightly depressed, although his shops are seeing improved sales.
"We were cut in half in 2008," Nelson said. But even with improvements in sales the last two years, "we're still not back to where we were."
However, Western Art Week in Great Falls has a specific market, one that comes to the events to buy, and Nelson said he believes the week "is going to be great."
"The Russell has got some nice Russell material for sale," he said.
Nelson said March in Montana has fine pieces, too, particularly a large number of bronzes by living and deceased sculptors, as well as paintings and Western collectibles. Nelson said Great Falls art buffs may be especially interested in works by late artists Joe Abbrescia and Arlene Hooker Fay.
Nelson also praised the support area residents give Western Art Week.
"I think they're very involved," he said. "We have tremendous numbers of people walking through our show."
In addition to Western Art Week's two big auction events, which grossed about $3 million combined last year, Cawdrey said the Western Masters Art Show and Sale sold about $1.5 million worth of art in exhibition rooms and through the Western Master's Off the Wall Auction and related events.
That's nearly $5 million generated by three major Western Art Week shows, not to mention other popular shows, including the Western Heritage Artists Show at the Holiday Inn, the Jay Contway & Friends Art Show at Montana ExpoPark, the Wild Bunch Art Show at the Hampton Inn, and several other shows selling antiques, guns and collectibles.
2012年3月11日星期日
2012年3月8日星期四
The Art of the Tablet
In London, Museum visitors are dashing through the Tate Modern, taking in works of art—on their smartphones. During the latest Art Basel art fair in Switzerland, a collector agreed to buy a $250,000 painting—while sitting in a hair salon in Los Angeles, looking at the work on her tablet. These days, anyone with an iPad can create their own Damien Hirst painting, thanks to an app from the Gagosian Gallery, which recently showed the artist's work at its 11 global outposts.
Digital tools are changing the way that art is bought, sold and simply looked at. Collectors who once traveled across the world to art fairs and auctions are buying more works without seeing them in person, relying instead on digital views. Galleries now have the ability to show many more works to interested collectors than they have in their showrooms, simply by swiping through digital inventories. Museums are encouraging visitors to download digital apps to get more information about works on display. Some museum and gallery apps allow visitors to zoom in on a work for a closer look than they would get with the naked eye—a development that will likely be bolstered by Apple's introduction this week of a new iPad with a sharper display screen.
"We're in the midst of a sea change in the way museums relate to their audiences," says Peter Samis, associate curator of interpretive media at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "There's this booming demand at the highest level, like trustees are all saying, 'Where's our iPad app?' at every museum, large and small, across America."
Officials at Christie's and Sotheby's say they're seeing more iPads and other devices filling the room during sales. Christie's, which already offers absentee bidding via its website, expects to extend absentee bidding to its iPad app next month, along with new features like access to condition reports on works. Sotheby's just updated its iPad catalog app to allow collectors to take notes in digital catalogs during sales.
Tablets are also increasingly a staple of art fairs. At Art Basel in Switzerland last June, dealer Adam Sheffer, a partner at the New York gallery Cheim & Read, met with a client interested in a work by Ghada Amer, an Egyptian painter whose labor-intensive pieces are filled with intricate embroidery. The gallery's works were inventoried on the iPad using ArtBinder, an app that is swiftly replacing the use of physical binders at art fairs. The Los Angeles-based collector was ready to buy the work, but he wanted the signoff of his wife, who was more than 5,800 miles away in a hair salon in Los Angeles. Mr. Sheffer emailed a close-up of the work to the wife, an art enthusiast, who agreed to the $250,000 sale. "The whole thing took an hour," Mr. Sheffer says.
Miami Beach collector Dennis Scholl says photography and video art are a natural fit when he's considering buying an artwork based on a digital image; for sculpture, with its scale issues, and drawings, with their subtle gradations of shading, he likes to see the works in person. Mr. Scholl recently pulled the trigger on a work by Tamy Ben-Tor, using his iPad to view the video of the Israeli artist as an old woman in a forest. "The iPad, because of the beauty of the images and the clarity of the reproduction, it makes you braver as a collector," he says.
Digital tools can also help collectors organize large inventories they may have stored in locations around the world. Curator Laura J. Mueller tracks more than 700 Japanese works scattered across two homes and a warehouse for a private New York collector by organizing digital images of the pieces using an iPhone and iPad app, Collectrium.
In May, the next edition of the Gagosian app will feature photographer Taryn Simon. A tap on any of roughly 200 photographs by Ms. Simon will take users deeper into the backstory of images from one of her series. Gagosian isn't currently showing Ms. Simon's pieces in its brick-and-mortar galleries, but the app will expose her work to potential buyers.
Digital tools are changing the way that art is bought, sold and simply looked at. Collectors who once traveled across the world to art fairs and auctions are buying more works without seeing them in person, relying instead on digital views. Galleries now have the ability to show many more works to interested collectors than they have in their showrooms, simply by swiping through digital inventories. Museums are encouraging visitors to download digital apps to get more information about works on display. Some museum and gallery apps allow visitors to zoom in on a work for a closer look than they would get with the naked eye—a development that will likely be bolstered by Apple's introduction this week of a new iPad with a sharper display screen.
"We're in the midst of a sea change in the way museums relate to their audiences," says Peter Samis, associate curator of interpretive media at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "There's this booming demand at the highest level, like trustees are all saying, 'Where's our iPad app?' at every museum, large and small, across America."
Officials at Christie's and Sotheby's say they're seeing more iPads and other devices filling the room during sales. Christie's, which already offers absentee bidding via its website, expects to extend absentee bidding to its iPad app next month, along with new features like access to condition reports on works. Sotheby's just updated its iPad catalog app to allow collectors to take notes in digital catalogs during sales.
Tablets are also increasingly a staple of art fairs. At Art Basel in Switzerland last June, dealer Adam Sheffer, a partner at the New York gallery Cheim & Read, met with a client interested in a work by Ghada Amer, an Egyptian painter whose labor-intensive pieces are filled with intricate embroidery. The gallery's works were inventoried on the iPad using ArtBinder, an app that is swiftly replacing the use of physical binders at art fairs. The Los Angeles-based collector was ready to buy the work, but he wanted the signoff of his wife, who was more than 5,800 miles away in a hair salon in Los Angeles. Mr. Sheffer emailed a close-up of the work to the wife, an art enthusiast, who agreed to the $250,000 sale. "The whole thing took an hour," Mr. Sheffer says.
Miami Beach collector Dennis Scholl says photography and video art are a natural fit when he's considering buying an artwork based on a digital image; for sculpture, with its scale issues, and drawings, with their subtle gradations of shading, he likes to see the works in person. Mr. Scholl recently pulled the trigger on a work by Tamy Ben-Tor, using his iPad to view the video of the Israeli artist as an old woman in a forest. "The iPad, because of the beauty of the images and the clarity of the reproduction, it makes you braver as a collector," he says.
Digital tools can also help collectors organize large inventories they may have stored in locations around the world. Curator Laura J. Mueller tracks more than 700 Japanese works scattered across two homes and a warehouse for a private New York collector by organizing digital images of the pieces using an iPhone and iPad app, Collectrium.
In May, the next edition of the Gagosian app will feature photographer Taryn Simon. A tap on any of roughly 200 photographs by Ms. Simon will take users deeper into the backstory of images from one of her series. Gagosian isn't currently showing Ms. Simon's pieces in its brick-and-mortar galleries, but the app will expose her work to potential buyers.
2012年3月7日星期三
For sale: picture of city jeweller’s home
A TRANQUIL Victorian oil painting with a fascinating Sheffield link is for sale from a West End art dealer – priced at more than 150,000.
The 14x9 inch moonlit view is of Yew Court, which in the early 1900s was home to retired watchmaker and jeweller William Tingle Brown.
Tingle Brown was so well-off he retired in his early 30s, having spent his 20s helping to run his family’s watchmaking and jewellery business in High Street, Sheffield, with younger brother Edward and sisters Charlotte and Ann.
By 1881, when he was 35, Tingle Brown described himself as a ‘retired jeweller’ living in a house called Oaklands – possibly on Collegiate Crescent, off Ecclesall Road – in Sheffield, with wife Jane, 39, and daughter Edith, one. His sister Fanny, 21, and two live-in servants – Emily and Alice Tudbury, 19 and 25 – lived with them.
Sadly, between 1881 and 1891, Jane died – and by the next Census in 1901 Tingle Brown had remarried. Still ‘living on own means’ he was then 53 and second wife, Clara, was 38. He, Clara, and Edith, by then 21, had moved to Yew Court in Scalby, near Scarborough, with three live-in servants.
The picture of their home had been produced some time in the 1870s by artist John Atkinson Grimshaw, who painted at least three pictures of the property. One is owned by Scarborough Art Gallery.
The picture for sale is offered by London dealers MacConnal-Mason, whose chairman David Mason is a former Antiques Roadshow expert and a close friend of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lord Lloyd Webber is known to own 14 paintings by Grimshaw, who specialised in moonlit views.
A spokesman for the dealers said: “Grimshaw portrays the house and high street by the bright silvery moonlight of a full moon as a mother and child make their way home.
“It is a beautifully observed scene, the mother tilting her head towards the child as they converse holding hands.
“The light from the unseen moon gleams on the windows and bathes the road and garden walls. It is a particularly serene and tranquil scene, characterised by Grimshaw’s extraordinarily detailed technique, unique quality of light and acute observation.”
The 14x9 inch moonlit view is of Yew Court, which in the early 1900s was home to retired watchmaker and jeweller William Tingle Brown.
Tingle Brown was so well-off he retired in his early 30s, having spent his 20s helping to run his family’s watchmaking and jewellery business in High Street, Sheffield, with younger brother Edward and sisters Charlotte and Ann.
By 1881, when he was 35, Tingle Brown described himself as a ‘retired jeweller’ living in a house called Oaklands – possibly on Collegiate Crescent, off Ecclesall Road – in Sheffield, with wife Jane, 39, and daughter Edith, one. His sister Fanny, 21, and two live-in servants – Emily and Alice Tudbury, 19 and 25 – lived with them.
Sadly, between 1881 and 1891, Jane died – and by the next Census in 1901 Tingle Brown had remarried. Still ‘living on own means’ he was then 53 and second wife, Clara, was 38. He, Clara, and Edith, by then 21, had moved to Yew Court in Scalby, near Scarborough, with three live-in servants.
The picture of their home had been produced some time in the 1870s by artist John Atkinson Grimshaw, who painted at least three pictures of the property. One is owned by Scarborough Art Gallery.
The picture for sale is offered by London dealers MacConnal-Mason, whose chairman David Mason is a former Antiques Roadshow expert and a close friend of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lord Lloyd Webber is known to own 14 paintings by Grimshaw, who specialised in moonlit views.
A spokesman for the dealers said: “Grimshaw portrays the house and high street by the bright silvery moonlight of a full moon as a mother and child make their way home.
“It is a beautifully observed scene, the mother tilting her head towards the child as they converse holding hands.
“The light from the unseen moon gleams on the windows and bathes the road and garden walls. It is a particularly serene and tranquil scene, characterised by Grimshaw’s extraordinarily detailed technique, unique quality of light and acute observation.”
2012年3月6日星期二
Shock and bore: is 'traditional' art making a comeback?
It wasn't your usual London street party. On this balmy 1990s afternoon, a group of young artists were part of a bizarre get-together called A Fete Worse than Death.
The most eye-catching contribution came from the ever-entrepreneurial Damien Hirst. Dressed in a clown's costume, for 50p he offered passers-by a sneak peek of his testicles, which he'd spot-painted that morning.
Two decades and an estimated 215m [$321m] later, over 300 of Hirst's rather more respectable spot paintings are being shown worldwide at all 11 of Larry Gagosian's galleries. In April, he will be given a retrospective at Tate Modern, London's flagship show during the Olympics. As the world turns its eyes on London, art's biggest showman is taking centre stage. The clown, it seems, is having the last laugh.
Or is he? Sticking two fingers up at the establishment has of course become Hirst's trademark. Nearly 25 years after the enterprising Goldsmiths student staged a headline-grabbing show in a disused warehouse, and went on to exhibit a variety of pickled animals in various states of putrefaction, to say he still divides opinion would be an understatement. "Detestable and f------ dreadful" is how the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell described one recent show. "Simple-minded and sensationalist" is Australian critic Robert Hughes's verdict on an entire career.
Last month David Hockney entered the fray. According to the BBC's Andrew Marr, when asked if a poster in his gallery reading, "All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally", was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney nodded. Hockney has since denied attacking Hirst personally. Either way, art's enfant terrible is more than used to swipes at his use of 160 "assistants" to execute his artistic ideas. As he himself said: "I only made five spot paintings myself . . . And the spots I painted are shite." But Hockney went on to make a more telling point. "It's a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen," he told Marr. "I used to point out . . . you can teach the craft, it's the poetry you can't teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft."
Hockney's views are echoed by the artist George Shaw. "I became incredibly frustrated at art school . . . that you needed a philosophical language to understand contemporary art, rather than a pictorial one," he says. Shaw, 45, a painter in an old-school realist tradition, won acclaim last year for his images of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. For him, art is about works that "an art historian and his mother could both enjoy . . . But that wasn't what [the tutors] were looking for."
Many feel Shaw was scandalously overlooked for last year's Turner Prize, losing out to installation artist Martin Boyce. But was it down to the Hirst effect? Certainly, there was already a well-established shift away from orthodox art education when Hirst arrived at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s. In the 1960s - under the influence of minimalism and conceptualism - art schools nationwide had decided intellectual pursuits were as important as technical ones. Painting was dead, the US minimalist Donald Judd declared, and curating, theorising and art history soon became as important as draughtsmanship.
The painter Gabriella Boyd can't see what the fuss is about. "Drawing's still taught and it's still popular," she says.
In hard times, we might even expect to see a return to old-school disciplines on cost-grounds. Paints and pencils are a darn sight cheaper than tanks of formaldehyde. There's already talk of a new austerity aesthetic, one wholly at odds with Hirst's $100 million, diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God (2007).
Gregor Muir, director of the ICA, isn't sure. "Often in times of trouble, you see the rise of fantastists, surrealists and other artists looking to escape it all. In the film world, The Artist is a good example, a light-hearted movie perfectly timed to cheer us all up." Muir insists Hirst hasn't cloned a generation of artists. "Categorically not. Damien's a unique case. A brand unto himself, really."
Hirst's sales figures confirm this. At the now infamous 2008 Sotheby's sale, when Hirst auctioned off 223 works, his Golden Calf sold for 10.3m. Now the plentiful supply of spot paintings , one of which sold last year for 1.8m, ensures Hirst keeps himself within the price range of not-quite-so-rich buyers too.
In spite of global economic meltdown, Sotheby's sales in contemporary art shot up by 34 per cent in 2011 as investors increasingly turn to art to hedge against volatile markets. But how much of this rise is down to Hirst-style installations? "We tend not to take on too many big installation works nowadays," says James Sevier of Sotheby's. "The top lots in our recent sale were abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter, for instance. I wouldn't say Damien has brought about a seismic shift." The three canvases by the 80-year-old German painter sold for over 4m. Evidence that things are looking up for lovers of traditional painting?
The most eye-catching contribution came from the ever-entrepreneurial Damien Hirst. Dressed in a clown's costume, for 50p he offered passers-by a sneak peek of his testicles, which he'd spot-painted that morning.
Two decades and an estimated 215m [$321m] later, over 300 of Hirst's rather more respectable spot paintings are being shown worldwide at all 11 of Larry Gagosian's galleries. In April, he will be given a retrospective at Tate Modern, London's flagship show during the Olympics. As the world turns its eyes on London, art's biggest showman is taking centre stage. The clown, it seems, is having the last laugh.
Or is he? Sticking two fingers up at the establishment has of course become Hirst's trademark. Nearly 25 years after the enterprising Goldsmiths student staged a headline-grabbing show in a disused warehouse, and went on to exhibit a variety of pickled animals in various states of putrefaction, to say he still divides opinion would be an understatement. "Detestable and f------ dreadful" is how the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell described one recent show. "Simple-minded and sensationalist" is Australian critic Robert Hughes's verdict on an entire career.
Last month David Hockney entered the fray. According to the BBC's Andrew Marr, when asked if a poster in his gallery reading, "All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally", was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney nodded. Hockney has since denied attacking Hirst personally. Either way, art's enfant terrible is more than used to swipes at his use of 160 "assistants" to execute his artistic ideas. As he himself said: "I only made five spot paintings myself . . . And the spots I painted are shite." But Hockney went on to make a more telling point. "It's a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen," he told Marr. "I used to point out . . . you can teach the craft, it's the poetry you can't teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft."
Hockney's views are echoed by the artist George Shaw. "I became incredibly frustrated at art school . . . that you needed a philosophical language to understand contemporary art, rather than a pictorial one," he says. Shaw, 45, a painter in an old-school realist tradition, won acclaim last year for his images of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. For him, art is about works that "an art historian and his mother could both enjoy . . . But that wasn't what [the tutors] were looking for."
Many feel Shaw was scandalously overlooked for last year's Turner Prize, losing out to installation artist Martin Boyce. But was it down to the Hirst effect? Certainly, there was already a well-established shift away from orthodox art education when Hirst arrived at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s. In the 1960s - under the influence of minimalism and conceptualism - art schools nationwide had decided intellectual pursuits were as important as technical ones. Painting was dead, the US minimalist Donald Judd declared, and curating, theorising and art history soon became as important as draughtsmanship.
The painter Gabriella Boyd can't see what the fuss is about. "Drawing's still taught and it's still popular," she says.
In hard times, we might even expect to see a return to old-school disciplines on cost-grounds. Paints and pencils are a darn sight cheaper than tanks of formaldehyde. There's already talk of a new austerity aesthetic, one wholly at odds with Hirst's $100 million, diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God (2007).
Gregor Muir, director of the ICA, isn't sure. "Often in times of trouble, you see the rise of fantastists, surrealists and other artists looking to escape it all. In the film world, The Artist is a good example, a light-hearted movie perfectly timed to cheer us all up." Muir insists Hirst hasn't cloned a generation of artists. "Categorically not. Damien's a unique case. A brand unto himself, really."
Hirst's sales figures confirm this. At the now infamous 2008 Sotheby's sale, when Hirst auctioned off 223 works, his Golden Calf sold for 10.3m. Now the plentiful supply of spot paintings , one of which sold last year for 1.8m, ensures Hirst keeps himself within the price range of not-quite-so-rich buyers too.
In spite of global economic meltdown, Sotheby's sales in contemporary art shot up by 34 per cent in 2011 as investors increasingly turn to art to hedge against volatile markets. But how much of this rise is down to Hirst-style installations? "We tend not to take on too many big installation works nowadays," says James Sevier of Sotheby's. "The top lots in our recent sale were abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter, for instance. I wouldn't say Damien has brought about a seismic shift." The three canvases by the 80-year-old German painter sold for over 4m. Evidence that things are looking up for lovers of traditional painting?
2012年3月5日星期一
Serge Lifar's Ballets Russes archive on sale in Geneva
The last remnants of one of the greatest private collections of Ballets Russes material goes on view in Geneva this week, prior to being sold on March 13. The sale includes more than 300 drawings, paintings and prints by the likes of Picasso, Max Ernst and Juan Gris, 3,000 vintage photographs of celebrities from Coco Chanel to Charlie Chaplin, and a rediscovered trove of drawings and manuscripts by Jean Cocteau; all owned by Serge Lifar, the principal dancer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes during its final years in the late 1920s.
One of the most celebrated male dancers of the 20th century along with Nijinsky and Nureyev, Lifar was born in Kiev in 1905, and joined the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1923. The company, directed by Serge Diaghilev, revolutionised ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracised by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
With his good looks and athletic physique, Lifar soon became a star and a member of high society, befriending not only dancers and choreographers, but leading artists, writers and composers of the day.
His collection of props, designs and costumes was acquired almost exclusively from such associates. A substantial amount of material came from Diaghilev either before or after his death in 1929. Lifar was an executor of Diaghilev’s estate, and took it upon himself to safeguard many of his possessions. By 1933, he had acquired enough material to mount an exhibition in New York, where he was touring with his troupe, of more than 200 works of art and costumes, including designs by Bakst, Gontcharova, Picasso, Ernst, and Miro. However, short of the return fare to Paris, Lifar sold the collection to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut for what was then a princely $10,000.
Lifar continued to collect throughout his tenancy as the director of the Paris Opera, which ended in 1958. It was then that he met up with the glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt, who became his devoted companion for the rest of his life. Lifar continued to add to his collection. During the 1960s, he received several dedicated drawings from Picasso including a portrait, now estimated at 210,000, and some coloured pastels (estimate 55,200) relating to the ballet Icarus, which Lifar revived in 1962.
The last remnants of one of the greatest private collections of Ballets Russes material goes on view in Geneva this week, prior to being sold on March 13. The sale includes more than 300 drawings, paintings and prints by the likes of Picasso, Max Ernst and Juan Gris, 3,000 vintage photographs of celebrities from Coco Chanel to Charlie Chaplin, and a rediscovered trove of drawings and manuscripts by Jean Cocteau; all owned by Serge Lifar, the principal dancer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes during its final years in the late 1920s.
One of the most celebrated male dancers of the 20th century along with Nijinsky and Nureyev, Lifar was born in Kiev in 1905, and joined the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1923. The company, directed by Serge Diaghilev, revolutionised ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracised by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
With his good looks and athletic physique, Lifar soon became a star and a member of high society, befriending not only dancers and choreographers, but leading artists, writers and composers of the day.
His collection of props, designs and costumes was acquired almost exclusively from such associates. A substantial amount of material came from Diaghilev either before or after his death in 1929. Lifar was an executor of Diaghilev’s estate, and took it upon himself to safeguard many of his possessions. By 1933, he had acquired enough material to mount an exhibition in New York, where he was touring with his troupe, of more than 200 works of art and costumes, including designs by Bakst, Gontcharova, Picasso, Ernst, and Miro. However, short of the return fare to Paris, Lifar sold the collection to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut for what was then a princely $10,000.
Lifar continued to collect throughout his tenancy as the director of the Paris Opera, which ended in 1958. It was then that he met up with the glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt, who became his devoted companion for the rest of his life. Lifar continued to add to his collection. During the 1960s, he received several dedicated drawings from Picasso including a portrait, now estimated at 210,000, and some coloured pastels (estimate 55,200) relating to the ballet Icarus, which Lifar revived in 1962.
One of the most celebrated male dancers of the 20th century along with Nijinsky and Nureyev, Lifar was born in Kiev in 1905, and joined the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1923. The company, directed by Serge Diaghilev, revolutionised ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracised by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
With his good looks and athletic physique, Lifar soon became a star and a member of high society, befriending not only dancers and choreographers, but leading artists, writers and composers of the day.
His collection of props, designs and costumes was acquired almost exclusively from such associates. A substantial amount of material came from Diaghilev either before or after his death in 1929. Lifar was an executor of Diaghilev’s estate, and took it upon himself to safeguard many of his possessions. By 1933, he had acquired enough material to mount an exhibition in New York, where he was touring with his troupe, of more than 200 works of art and costumes, including designs by Bakst, Gontcharova, Picasso, Ernst, and Miro. However, short of the return fare to Paris, Lifar sold the collection to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut for what was then a princely $10,000.
Lifar continued to collect throughout his tenancy as the director of the Paris Opera, which ended in 1958. It was then that he met up with the glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt, who became his devoted companion for the rest of his life. Lifar continued to add to his collection. During the 1960s, he received several dedicated drawings from Picasso including a portrait, now estimated at 210,000, and some coloured pastels (estimate 55,200) relating to the ballet Icarus, which Lifar revived in 1962.
The last remnants of one of the greatest private collections of Ballets Russes material goes on view in Geneva this week, prior to being sold on March 13. The sale includes more than 300 drawings, paintings and prints by the likes of Picasso, Max Ernst and Juan Gris, 3,000 vintage photographs of celebrities from Coco Chanel to Charlie Chaplin, and a rediscovered trove of drawings and manuscripts by Jean Cocteau; all owned by Serge Lifar, the principal dancer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes during its final years in the late 1920s.
One of the most celebrated male dancers of the 20th century along with Nijinsky and Nureyev, Lifar was born in Kiev in 1905, and joined the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1923. The company, directed by Serge Diaghilev, revolutionised ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracised by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
With his good looks and athletic physique, Lifar soon became a star and a member of high society, befriending not only dancers and choreographers, but leading artists, writers and composers of the day.
His collection of props, designs and costumes was acquired almost exclusively from such associates. A substantial amount of material came from Diaghilev either before or after his death in 1929. Lifar was an executor of Diaghilev’s estate, and took it upon himself to safeguard many of his possessions. By 1933, he had acquired enough material to mount an exhibition in New York, where he was touring with his troupe, of more than 200 works of art and costumes, including designs by Bakst, Gontcharova, Picasso, Ernst, and Miro. However, short of the return fare to Paris, Lifar sold the collection to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut for what was then a princely $10,000.
Lifar continued to collect throughout his tenancy as the director of the Paris Opera, which ended in 1958. It was then that he met up with the glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt, who became his devoted companion for the rest of his life. Lifar continued to add to his collection. During the 1960s, he received several dedicated drawings from Picasso including a portrait, now estimated at 210,000, and some coloured pastels (estimate 55,200) relating to the ballet Icarus, which Lifar revived in 1962.
2012年3月4日星期日
Damien Hirst: has shock art lost its bite?
It wasn’t your usual London street party. There were no children playing, Victoria sponges or Union Jack bunting. Instead, on this balmy early Nineties afternoon, a group of young artists were taking part in a bizarre get-together in Hoxton called A Fete Worse than Death.
At one stall, Tracey Emin did palm readings; at another, Gary Hume sold tequila slammers. Yet the most eye-catching contribution came from the ever-entrepreneurial Damien Hirst. Dressed in a clown’s costume, for 50p he offered passers-by a sneak peek of his testicles, which he’d spot-painted that morning.
Two decades and an estimated 215million later, over 300 of Hirst’s rather more respectable spot paintings are being shown worldwide at all 11 of Larry Gagosian’s art galleries. In April, he will be given a retrospective at Tate Modern, London’s flagship show during the Olympics. As the world turns its eyes on London, art’s biggest showman is taking centre stage. The clown, it seems, is having the last laugh.
Or is he? Sticking two fingers up at the establishment has of course become Hirst’s trademark. Nearly 25 years after the enterprising young Goldsmiths student staged a headline-grabbing show in a disused warehouse, and went on to exhibit a variety of pickled animals in various states of putrefaction, to say that he still divides opinion would be an understatement. “Detestable and f------ dreadful” is how the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell described one recent show. “Simple-minded and sensationalist” is Australian critic Robert Hughes’s verdict on an entire career.
Then, last month, David Hockney entered the fray. According to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, when asked if a poster in his gallery reading, “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally”, was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney nodded. Hockney has since denied attacking Hirst personally. Either way, art’s enfant terrible is more than used to swipes at his use of 160 “assistants” to execute his artistic ideas. As he himself said: “I only made five spot paintings myself… And the spots I painted are s----.” But Hockney went on to make a more telling point. “It’s a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen…” he told Marr. “I used to point out at art school, you can teach the craft, it’s the poetry you can’t teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft.”
Is he right? Did “conceptual” art take such a stranglehold in Hirst and his compatriots’ wake that technique was sacrificed? Just what has Hirst’s influence been on British artists? And might there, finally, be a swing away from the form he made so famous and infamous all at once?
Hockney’s views are echoed by the artist George Shaw, who graduated from Hockney’s own alma mater, the Royal College of Art, in 1998. “I became incredibly frustrated at art school… that you needed a philosophical language to understand contemporary art, rather than a pictorial one,” he says. Shaw, 45, a painter in an old-school realist tradition, was Turner-nominated last year for his images of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. For him, art is about works that “an art historian and his mother could both enjoy... But that wasn’t what [the tutors] were looking for.”
Many feel Shaw was scandalously overlooked for last year’s prize, losing out to installation artist Martin Boyce. But was it down to the Hirst effect? Certainly, there was already a well-established shift away from orthodox art education when Hirst arrived at Goldsmiths College in Camberwell in the late Eighties. In the Sixties – under the influence of minimalism and conceptualism – art schools nationwide had decided intellectual pursuits were as important as technical ones. Painting was dead, the US minimalist Donald Judd declared, and curating, theorising and art history soon became as important as draughtsmanship.
“Damien didn’t create this milieu, but he thrived in it,” says Michael Archer, director of Goldsmiths’ BA in fine art. And Hirst needed little encouragement from Goldsmiths’ Dean at the time, Jon Thompson, who led this break with tradition. “Our philosophy remains the same today,” Archer says. “We don’t break our course down into rigid components of compulsory disciplines.” But doesn’t this encourage following the path of least resistance? Who can be bothered with the 10,000 hours mastering their craft? “If a student wants to learn how to weave or weld, we have the staff to teach it,” he says. “But we don’t force them.”
The painter Gabriella Boyd, a recent graduate from Glasgow School of Art, can’t see what the fuss is about. “Drawing’s still taught and it’s still popular,” says the 24- year-old. “I used to love life-drawing class at college and I wasn’t the only one.” A quick look around Boyd’s website, indeed, is like being taken in a time-machine back to a Hockney show in the early Sixties.
At one stall, Tracey Emin did palm readings; at another, Gary Hume sold tequila slammers. Yet the most eye-catching contribution came from the ever-entrepreneurial Damien Hirst. Dressed in a clown’s costume, for 50p he offered passers-by a sneak peek of his testicles, which he’d spot-painted that morning.
Two decades and an estimated 215million later, over 300 of Hirst’s rather more respectable spot paintings are being shown worldwide at all 11 of Larry Gagosian’s art galleries. In April, he will be given a retrospective at Tate Modern, London’s flagship show during the Olympics. As the world turns its eyes on London, art’s biggest showman is taking centre stage. The clown, it seems, is having the last laugh.
Or is he? Sticking two fingers up at the establishment has of course become Hirst’s trademark. Nearly 25 years after the enterprising young Goldsmiths student staged a headline-grabbing show in a disused warehouse, and went on to exhibit a variety of pickled animals in various states of putrefaction, to say that he still divides opinion would be an understatement. “Detestable and f------ dreadful” is how the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell described one recent show. “Simple-minded and sensationalist” is Australian critic Robert Hughes’s verdict on an entire career.
Then, last month, David Hockney entered the fray. According to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, when asked if a poster in his gallery reading, “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally”, was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney nodded. Hockney has since denied attacking Hirst personally. Either way, art’s enfant terrible is more than used to swipes at his use of 160 “assistants” to execute his artistic ideas. As he himself said: “I only made five spot paintings myself… And the spots I painted are s----.” But Hockney went on to make a more telling point. “It’s a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen…” he told Marr. “I used to point out at art school, you can teach the craft, it’s the poetry you can’t teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft.”
Is he right? Did “conceptual” art take such a stranglehold in Hirst and his compatriots’ wake that technique was sacrificed? Just what has Hirst’s influence been on British artists? And might there, finally, be a swing away from the form he made so famous and infamous all at once?
Hockney’s views are echoed by the artist George Shaw, who graduated from Hockney’s own alma mater, the Royal College of Art, in 1998. “I became incredibly frustrated at art school… that you needed a philosophical language to understand contemporary art, rather than a pictorial one,” he says. Shaw, 45, a painter in an old-school realist tradition, was Turner-nominated last year for his images of the Coventry housing estate he grew up on. For him, art is about works that “an art historian and his mother could both enjoy... But that wasn’t what [the tutors] were looking for.”
Many feel Shaw was scandalously overlooked for last year’s prize, losing out to installation artist Martin Boyce. But was it down to the Hirst effect? Certainly, there was already a well-established shift away from orthodox art education when Hirst arrived at Goldsmiths College in Camberwell in the late Eighties. In the Sixties – under the influence of minimalism and conceptualism – art schools nationwide had decided intellectual pursuits were as important as technical ones. Painting was dead, the US minimalist Donald Judd declared, and curating, theorising and art history soon became as important as draughtsmanship.
“Damien didn’t create this milieu, but he thrived in it,” says Michael Archer, director of Goldsmiths’ BA in fine art. And Hirst needed little encouragement from Goldsmiths’ Dean at the time, Jon Thompson, who led this break with tradition. “Our philosophy remains the same today,” Archer says. “We don’t break our course down into rigid components of compulsory disciplines.” But doesn’t this encourage following the path of least resistance? Who can be bothered with the 10,000 hours mastering their craft? “If a student wants to learn how to weave or weld, we have the staff to teach it,” he says. “But we don’t force them.”
The painter Gabriella Boyd, a recent graduate from Glasgow School of Art, can’t see what the fuss is about. “Drawing’s still taught and it’s still popular,” says the 24- year-old. “I used to love life-drawing class at college and I wasn’t the only one.” A quick look around Boyd’s website, indeed, is like being taken in a time-machine back to a Hockney show in the early Sixties.
2012年3月1日星期四
A Sale of Knives by an Eccentric Maker
The reclusive blacksmith William W. Scagel lived off the grid in the woods near Muskegon, Mich. From the 1920s to the ’60s, he manufactured luxury knives there, with ergonomically curved horn and antler handles, powering his home and workshop with a windmill, old submarine batteries and a Cadillac engine.
He sold his products through a few urban outlets, including Abercrombie & Fitch. Customers also stopped by, but warily, partly because of dark rumors about what had happened to Scagel’s two ex-wives.
Area residents gossiped that one or the other woman had been killed: that she was gored by an animal while on safari with Scagel, or that he stabbed or shot her or shoved her over Niagara Falls. Dr. James R. Lucie, a retired physician in Fruitport, Mich., has published a new biography, “Scagel Handmade,” explaining that the knife maker was simply twice divorced from incompatible spouses.
Dr. Lucie spent hours as a young doctor interviewing Scagel, who died in 1963 at 88. Dr. Lucie has acquired dozens of Scagel knives and axes, including table cutlery and Marine weaponry, and has consigned them for a March 12 auction at James D. Julia in Fairfield, Me.
Dr. Lucie, 83, said in a recent phone interview that selling the collection made sense once the book came out. He is widowed, with four daughters. “I don’t want to leave a mess on their hands,” he said.
The blades are expected to bring up to $30,000 each. Scagel weathervanes, cooking pots and workshop tools have estimates up to a few thousand dollars apiece. Dr. Lucie has defaced Scagel’s hallmarking dies with deep scrapes, so they cannot be used to create fakes.
The book describes Scagel’s daily life, tempering and sharpening steel over coal flames and wooden wheels. Once a week he relaxed for an evening at a local tavern, drinking beer alone. He would often rant about crooked politicians and unions. “He was an extreme right-wing conservative,” Dr. Lucie said.
Paperwork from Scagel’s divorces in 1902 and 1917 has turned up. The first wife, Rosetta, ran off with her married lover. The second, Alice, called her husband “sullen and morose” and accused him of scaring away visitors with a pet wolf in the yard. Scagel retorted that Alice was “exceedingly distrustful and jealous,” and that the wolf was “tame and harmless.”
Scagel had a little-known warm and fuzzy side. He made free leg braces for children who needed them because of polio, and gave knives to people who helped him. For a Democratic Party official who drove him home on a winter night, Scagel created a knife with a handle plated in ivory on one side and pink mother of pearl on the other. The different materials, he later admitted, represented his conviction that “Democrats are two-faced.”
In the Julia sale the “Democrat knife” is expected to bring up to $5,000.
The American Museum of Natural History often poses dinosaur skeletons in attack mode, based on the latest paleontological research. But some nearby vintage paintings have an anachronistic trace of pulp fiction and Art Deco.
Amid the bones, the museum displays dozens of tableaus of prehistory by the artist Charles R. Knight. Starting in the 1890s, he freelanced for museums around the country from his studios in Manhattan and Mount Vernon, N.Y.
“He just knocked out one painting after another after another,” even as his astigmatic and cataract-impaired eyes deteriorated into blindness, said Richard Milner, the author of a new monograph, “Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time” .
Mr. Milner has tracked down scattered Knight works, including elephant sculptures on Bronx Zoo buildings, sloth portraits at the Field Museum in Chicago and a scene of a rhinoceros fending off wolves at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He pored through Knight’s correspondence and an image archive that belongs to his granddaughter, Rhoda Knight Kalt.
The letters are so eloquent that Mr. Milner suspects that Knight, who died in 1953, and his friends expected future historians to appreciate the prose. “They knew one day we’d be picking over their bones, like the vultures in the dioramas,” he said during a recent tour of the New York museum’s galleries.
The painter’s handwriting deteriorated as his vision failed. He also constantly battled with clients who delayed payments and tried to edit his mural proposals.
“My own ideas from an artistic standpoint are the only ones to which I can subscribe,” Knight sternly wrote to Henry Fairfield Osborn, the museum’s president.
Knight was disciplined about refusing to collaborate, but hopeless with money. Unless his wife, Annie, and daughter, Lucy, watched over him, he would forget to ask for change at grocery stores. “You are a very good painter but a very bad mathematician,” a magazine editor wrote when Knight undercharged for an illustration.
In a stairwell at the museum, a Knight mural shows cavemen painting woolly mammoths by torchlight. Mr. Milner believes that one craggy face in the scene was a self-portrait. “The central figure is Knight,” he said. “There’s no question in my mind.”
Another caveman in the tableau wears an elegant collared robe and stands back skeptically to watch the work; he may represent forebears of Knight’s more difficult patrons. In prehistoric times, Mr. Milner said slyly, “The first occupation was artist, and the second was art critic.”
He sold his products through a few urban outlets, including Abercrombie & Fitch. Customers also stopped by, but warily, partly because of dark rumors about what had happened to Scagel’s two ex-wives.
Area residents gossiped that one or the other woman had been killed: that she was gored by an animal while on safari with Scagel, or that he stabbed or shot her or shoved her over Niagara Falls. Dr. James R. Lucie, a retired physician in Fruitport, Mich., has published a new biography, “Scagel Handmade,” explaining that the knife maker was simply twice divorced from incompatible spouses.
Dr. Lucie spent hours as a young doctor interviewing Scagel, who died in 1963 at 88. Dr. Lucie has acquired dozens of Scagel knives and axes, including table cutlery and Marine weaponry, and has consigned them for a March 12 auction at James D. Julia in Fairfield, Me.
Dr. Lucie, 83, said in a recent phone interview that selling the collection made sense once the book came out. He is widowed, with four daughters. “I don’t want to leave a mess on their hands,” he said.
The blades are expected to bring up to $30,000 each. Scagel weathervanes, cooking pots and workshop tools have estimates up to a few thousand dollars apiece. Dr. Lucie has defaced Scagel’s hallmarking dies with deep scrapes, so they cannot be used to create fakes.
The book describes Scagel’s daily life, tempering and sharpening steel over coal flames and wooden wheels. Once a week he relaxed for an evening at a local tavern, drinking beer alone. He would often rant about crooked politicians and unions. “He was an extreme right-wing conservative,” Dr. Lucie said.
Paperwork from Scagel’s divorces in 1902 and 1917 has turned up. The first wife, Rosetta, ran off with her married lover. The second, Alice, called her husband “sullen and morose” and accused him of scaring away visitors with a pet wolf in the yard. Scagel retorted that Alice was “exceedingly distrustful and jealous,” and that the wolf was “tame and harmless.”
Scagel had a little-known warm and fuzzy side. He made free leg braces for children who needed them because of polio, and gave knives to people who helped him. For a Democratic Party official who drove him home on a winter night, Scagel created a knife with a handle plated in ivory on one side and pink mother of pearl on the other. The different materials, he later admitted, represented his conviction that “Democrats are two-faced.”
In the Julia sale the “Democrat knife” is expected to bring up to $5,000.
The American Museum of Natural History often poses dinosaur skeletons in attack mode, based on the latest paleontological research. But some nearby vintage paintings have an anachronistic trace of pulp fiction and Art Deco.
Amid the bones, the museum displays dozens of tableaus of prehistory by the artist Charles R. Knight. Starting in the 1890s, he freelanced for museums around the country from his studios in Manhattan and Mount Vernon, N.Y.
“He just knocked out one painting after another after another,” even as his astigmatic and cataract-impaired eyes deteriorated into blindness, said Richard Milner, the author of a new monograph, “Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time” .
Mr. Milner has tracked down scattered Knight works, including elephant sculptures on Bronx Zoo buildings, sloth portraits at the Field Museum in Chicago and a scene of a rhinoceros fending off wolves at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He pored through Knight’s correspondence and an image archive that belongs to his granddaughter, Rhoda Knight Kalt.
The letters are so eloquent that Mr. Milner suspects that Knight, who died in 1953, and his friends expected future historians to appreciate the prose. “They knew one day we’d be picking over their bones, like the vultures in the dioramas,” he said during a recent tour of the New York museum’s galleries.
The painter’s handwriting deteriorated as his vision failed. He also constantly battled with clients who delayed payments and tried to edit his mural proposals.
“My own ideas from an artistic standpoint are the only ones to which I can subscribe,” Knight sternly wrote to Henry Fairfield Osborn, the museum’s president.
Knight was disciplined about refusing to collaborate, but hopeless with money. Unless his wife, Annie, and daughter, Lucy, watched over him, he would forget to ask for change at grocery stores. “You are a very good painter but a very bad mathematician,” a magazine editor wrote when Knight undercharged for an illustration.
In a stairwell at the museum, a Knight mural shows cavemen painting woolly mammoths by torchlight. Mr. Milner believes that one craggy face in the scene was a self-portrait. “The central figure is Knight,” he said. “There’s no question in my mind.”
Another caveman in the tableau wears an elegant collared robe and stands back skeptically to watch the work; he may represent forebears of Knight’s more difficult patrons. In prehistoric times, Mr. Milner said slyly, “The first occupation was artist, and the second was art critic.”
订阅：
博文 (Atom)